Contents

Origins

The groups started after a meeting in 1977. The members agreed that this organization should be created and that it should be kept very secret to any outsiders.[2]

Funding

The group was privately funded, and aimed to raise $5 million a year, though its actual income was more like $1 million/year.[3][2]Nicholas Elliott was a major fund raiser, though it is unclear how he got the money, though some is generally reckoned to have come from the CIA.[1] The suggestion that both MI6 and the CIA funded The 61 is made by the Langemann papers, which note that "It must therefore be concluded that MI6 is fully aware of, if not indeed one of the main sponsors of" Crozier's "diverse circle of friends in international politics."

Activities

We planned both to initiate secret operations in our various countries, and to coordinate the existing overt actions of the many private groups involved in the resistance to Soviet propaganda and Active Measures. At that time, we had no plans to operate as an espionage agency in the Soviet bloc countries. We felt that this was still a task that could be entrusted to our existing Intelligence services, including the CIA. Our main mission was in the field of countersubversion. Inevitably, we expected to pick up occasional items of secret intelligence. These we would pass on, at our discretion, to interested Allied agencies. We intended also to supplement the analyses made available to the American, British and other Allied governments by the official secret agencies. In many cases, these analyses would prove different. To this extent, they would provide an alternative assessment of current dangers for the special benefit of presidents and prime ministers.

Unlike existing agencies, we would not be hampered by prohibitions on functioning in our own or Allied countries. Security would be rigorously observed. In particular, the media, whatever they might guess or speculate upon, would never be told of our existence, or of the work we were doing. We would be concerned equally with home-grown subversion and the other kind. Soviet power and influence had been spreading, not only because of conscious efforts to that end by the KGB and its huge network of conscious ('witting') agents, but also spontaneously.

The prevailing ideology, among our intellectuals and media people, was heavily influenced, whether they knew it or not, by one variety or another of Marxism-Leninism. It was our job to counter this. Partly because of it, but also because the natural and commendable role of the press in a free society is to be critical of our governments, there was a tendency to give the other side (the Soviet bloc) the benefit of any doubt. There was no question, however, of interfering with freedom of the press or speech. The aim was to make alternative facts and opinions more widely available to our own leaders.

In Belgium, The 61 set up an organisation called Rally for Peace in Freedom, whose influence spread rapidly not only through the Belgian Parliament but into the country's schools, with the distribution of officially approved booklets on defence.

In West Germany, The 61 liaised with the Bonn Peace forum, providing posters and banners for demonstrations which warned students of "the dangers of unconditional pacifism".

In Britain, Julian Lewis and his cronies wrote letters to the press, hired light aircraft trailing anti-CND slogans, organised counter demonstrations and heckled Bruce Kent and other speakers at CND rallies. Anti-CND propaganda was produced in the form of booklets, pamphlets, posters and folders, such as one entitled "30 questions.. and honest answers about CND".
[5]